The Shin Bet disclosed Wednesday, Jan. 22, that three Palestinians in custody were recruited by al Qaeda for suicide operations planned by Ayman Zuwahiri for execution with five North Caucasian terrorists arriving on fake Russian passports. The targets were the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Convention Center and Jerusalem-Maaleh Adummim buses. debkafile: It was the first time Zuwahiri took a personal hand in setting up attacks inside Israel with mixed teams from the Caucasus, the Gaza Strip, Syria and local Palestinians.

The US and Iran agree to treat Tehran’s regional policies as separate from nuclear diplomacy to forestall obstacles which such opponents as Saudi Arabia and Israel may raise. Monday, Jan. 14, senior US sources admitted: “The US and Iran have sought to insulate the nuclear negotiations from the tensions over Iran’s regional policies.” On the Syrian issue, governments near and far will attend Geneva 2, but Israel is not invited, although events in next-door Syria and Lebanon directly impinge on its security. Sharon would not have taken this snub lying down.

Tehran is openly installing fast IR-2m centrifuges designed to speed uranium enrichment, and preparing even faster machines, claiming they were covered by the US-led five power recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment under the November, 2013 Geneva pact. debkafile: A follow-up meeting takes place Thursday, Nov. 9, in the face of the Iranian lawmaker Muhammad Nabavian’s revelation that Tehran can produce a bomb within two weeks - and a complete nuclear arsenal with the help of the new centrifuges. He named Israel as its target.

The newest Palestinian terrorist weapon is an Iranian copy of the Austrian single-shot Steyr 50 caliber assassin’s rifle. It was used by a trained sniper to murder Saleh Abu-Tayyel Tuesday on Dec. 24. The marksman belonged to the Hamas-commanded Popular Resistance Committees. He was assisted by a Jihad Islami scout who helped him position the 12.5 kilo, 1.37 m long rifle. IDF Master Sgt. Gal Koby, who was killed on Sept. 22 by a single shot in Hebron, may too have been the victim of a Palestinian sniper using a Steyr 50.

A medium-sized bomb exploded on a Dan No. 240 bus in Bat Yam on the outskirts of Tel Aviv Monday, Dec. 22, in what the police believe is a fresh outbreak of Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli civilian transport. A passenger spotted an unattended bag and alerted the driver who pulled over, cleared the bus and called the police in time. A police sapper who tried to defuse the bomb slightly hurt his hand when it blew up. Police judge the incident to be terror-related for a multiple-casualty attack.

From his holiday in Hawaii Saturday, Dec. 21, President Barack Obama threatened to withdraw the support of the US and other nations from South Sudan if the violence continued, after three US military planes were hit by ground fire on an evacuation mission over rebel-held Bor. Four Americans were injured, one critically. Obama held South Sudanese leaders responsible for protecting Americans. debkafile: The US warning applied also to the Israelis aiding South Sudan and trying to resolve the differences between the feuding President Saval Kiira and his ousted deputy Riek Machar.

The suspension of US-UK non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition in the north – ostensibly to keep it out of Islamist hands – is only part of the story. The aid will be put in the hands of the pro-American rebel forces deployed to man a new security zone the two powers are carving out in the south, as a barrier against al Qaeda’s encroachments on the Jordanian, Israeli, and Lebanese borders, as well as Damascus. Two war rooms in Irbid, Jordan will run the operation under a US general.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency “reveals” that Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Mossad are “co-conspiring to produce a computer worm more destructive than the Stuxnet malware to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.” It claims that Saudi intelligence director Prince Bandar Bin Sultan and Israel’s Mossad chief Tamir Pardo met in Vienna to decide on the virus attack on Nov. 24, shortly after the six world powers signed their first interim nuclear agreement with Iran in Geneva, and that a week earlier, Prince Bandar visited Israel secretly with French President Francois Hollande.

In New York and Tel Aviv, former CIA director Gen. Michael Haden and ex-chief of AMAN, Gen. (ret) Amos Yadlin, offered the same opinion. Both said Sunday, Dec. 1, that Iran has attained the status of a nuclear threshold state, able to build several nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks. By this diagnosis, they indicted their respective governments for failing to stop this happening. Hayden on the Geneva accord: “We need to negotiate hitting the delete button.” Yadlin: "Iran is a step before breakout to a bomb. This is unfortunate but true.”

The three terrorists killed by Israeli forces in the south Hebron village Yata Tuesday, Nov. 26, belonged to the first al Qaeda cell to infiltrate the West Bank from Sinai, most likely through Jordan, debkafile reports. They came to establish a major new network for attacking Israel and the Palestinian Authority - hence the combined army, Shin Bet and special anti-terror force’s expeditious action to terminate the cell. It is feared they were the harbinger of more infiltrations by al Qaide forces embedded around Israel’s borders in Sinai, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.

Turkish-Iranian intelligence cooperation has produced an operation against Syria rebel supplies through Turkey. Tehran wants to redirect Turkish exports from its Israeli route back to Syria, and use the Turkish route to promote Iranian products in Europe.

Israel voiced early Thursday, Nov. 7, its utter opposition to the new proposal the US plans to put before the two-day Geneva conference opening later in the day on Iran’s nuclear program. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, when he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem Wednesday, bitterly accused the Obama administration of yielding to the Russian-backed Iranian position. Should Tehran renege on the deal, the US proposal leaves it with the capacity for enriching enough weapons-grade uranium in 10 days to build several nuclear weapons.

It is hard to see why Israel is going through with the release of 26 Palestinian terrorists convicted for murder when the Palestinians have slapped down on the negotiating table 16 harsh terms - first revealed here by debkafile - that will defy even US Secretary of State John Kerry’s bridging skills. Each of those demands, such as Israel’s withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines, forgo E. Jerusalem and accept 1948 refugees, is calculated to finally stall any diplomatic solution of the Middle East dispute.

Iranian video cameras homed in on the presentation of a replica of the US-made ScanEagle drone by Iran’s air force chief Farzad Esmayeeli to Lt. Gen. Viktor Bondarev, visiting Russian air force chief, on Tuesday, Oct. 22. debkafile: This incident, an affront to the US, will also go down as a major military intelligence fraud, because it provided cover for the discreet handover to the Russian general of a replica complete with technology of America’s most secret drone, the sophisticated RQ-170 Sentinel, a prize long coveted by Moscow.

Obama, while pretending to be dissatisfied with Iran’s nuclear concessions, accelerates the wording of a draft nuclear deal with Iran via Russia and prepares to spring it on the world as a big surprise.